


sweet expression always speaks

by attheborder



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Crossdressing, First Time, Frottage With Footnotes, Huddling For Warmth, M/M, Parry's Second Expedition, Pre-Canon, Theatre, just guys being dudes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-17
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:41:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26372140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/attheborder/pseuds/attheborder
Summary: “But youdidlike me,” said James, a bit pleadingly. He fought back a shiver; tucked himself closer to Francis. “Despite yourself.”“I did,” said Francis, “I do. Naturally. It would be impossible not to.”“Are you saying I’m irresistible?”
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Sir James Clark Ross
Comments: 25
Kudos: 35
Collections: The Two Captains Fest 2020





	sweet expression always speaks

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kt_fairy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kt_fairy/gifts).



> Thank you so much Kt_fairy for prompting “Long Cold Winter on HMS Fury,” thereby giving me an excuse to go absolutely buckwild on the research.

“Miss Emily, pray come here,” Parry boomed—or rather, Sir Robert Bramble boomed, for that was the role in which their Captain had been cast in tonight’s entertainment. “Frederick, you dog, come the other side of me!” 

Francis strode over to Parry’s left, keeping his front cheated towards the audience as he’d been taught. 

Parry went on, “Let me appoint you two trustees for a bond Mr. Worthington shall give me— a bond of family alliance; fulfill your charge punctually, and Heaven prosper you in your obligations!” 

He turned to Hoppner beside him, whose wind-burned face was nearly the same color as his costume, a bright red Army lieutenant’s coat that fit him rather poorly. “Mr. Worthington, what say you?” 

Hoppner contorted his whole body in a comical pantomime of shock and delight. “You overwhelm me!” he cried. “I cannot speak!” 

This was Francis’s cue. He stepped downstage, out in front of Parry, and from the Captain’s other side stepped Miss Emily herself. 

In a pale blue walking dress, with bell-capped sleeves and a high waistband of white lace, Francis’s fellow midshipman James Ross was a delicate vision. His face, already tending towards fair, had been powdered so as to make him even fairer. His light lashes had been blackened by kohl, and his cheeks and lips had been dabbed with rouge, affecting a girlish countenance. 

After the previous scene of _The Poor Gentleman_ had seen Frederick Bramble swoon over the fair Emily, and step forth to defend her honor in a duel against the dastardly Sir Charles Cropland, this final fifth act naturally had to conclude with a consummation, in accordance with the rules of melodrama. 

A great whoop of delight went up from the assembled seamen as Francis took James in his arms and kissed him soundly, as befitting the besotted gentleman of means he portrayed. 

James’s lashes fluttered against Francis’s cheek, and he felt James smile underneath his mouth. On a whim, he brought a hand to the small of James’s back and dipped him low, which served to rouse the crowd’s spirits even further. 

“The trustees are dumb, too,” Parry recited with a grin, “but I see they are _embracing_ the obligations pretty willingly.” 

The theatrical wound itself up neatly with the recital of a rhyming epilogue, after which the performers took their bows. The audience rose from their seats and made their approval known, stamping and hooting in their boots and greatcoats. 

Francis’s head was spinning with the adulation, although it might well have been the cold. When he’d last been offstage, waiting for his next cue in the green-room set up behind the curtains, the thermometer had proffered a measly eleven degrees, and he'd found his coffee frozen in its cup. 

The fiddler struck up a tune, signaling the end of the performance, and the men began to mill about, many coming forward onstage to greet their messmates and give them their personal compliments. Or criticisms, as it were: Francis overheard _Hecla’s_ midshipman Edward Bird already receiving a round of fond mockery for his portrayal of the dogsbody Humphrey Dobbins, which had found him forgetting half his lines and needing to be cued in quite often by Captain Lyon, the stage manager. 

“Marvelous, that was marvelous,” said Captain Parry, turning to Francis. “We’ll make a leading man out of you yet, Mr. Crozier.” 

“I could have wept!” cried the always-effusive Captain Lyon, who in his role as the bumbling Dr. Ollapod had received by far the most laughs from the audience. “Young love warms the heart better than any stove, does it not?” He addressed this last to his fellow captain, who had clapped a congratulatory hand to James’s shoulder. 

“Indeed, George,” Parry agreed. “Shall you be casting them as sweethearts in more theatricals this season?” 

“I shudder to think of the outcry if I fail to!” Lyon said. “A stroke of genius on my part, was it not?” 

It had been a little over a month since Francis first tread the boards of the Theatre Royal, Winter Isle, as their humble stage had been dubbed; his acting debut as Sir Lucius O’Trigger in _The Rivals_ had come only at the insistence of James, the latest in a long line of efforts to get Francis fully integrated with the tight-knit crew of the expedition. 

And only a few further weeks had passed since Francis first saw James himself up onstage, as Charlotte in _The Mock Doctor._ He had known, of course, that as midshipmen they were both equally likely to be cast in distaff roles, and in fact James had mentioned in an offhand sort of way being one of the actors of choice for such parts during their last season at Melville Island. 

But no mere passing references could have prepared Francis for the sight of his friend, made up like a lady of quality and with a grace to match. James was no great actor—none of them could honestly be said to be so, except for perhaps Lyon, who might in another life have had quite a career in the West End—but nevertheless he commanded the stage whenever he appeared upon it, skirts swirling about as Charlotte decried Sir Jasper for his crimes against her heart. Francis wasn’t sure if he’d ever applauded harder in his life. 

Tonight’s performance, the third Theatre Royal outing of the season, had found Francis and James performing together for the first time. The play, like most in the ship’s library, was no great work, but it suited their use perfectly, as a light and sunny distraction from the cold and the dark. 

“Your instincts were spot-on, indeed,” Parry agreed. “Our very own Young and Grimani, I daresay!” 

The two captains ambled away then, having been motioned over to the other side of the stage by Mr. Fisher and Dr. Edwards. Francis turned to James, meaning to ask if James thought Lyon would really do as he said, and go on casting them as lovers—then he saw what he hadn’t before, caught up in the thrill of the performance as he’d been during the finale. 

James was quite clearly freezing. His arms were crossed over his chest, and Francis could see the horrid waxy whiteness of his fingers where they clutched at his thinly-covered shoulders. 

The men of the play were not exactly comfortable, of course, in their morning-jackets and waistcoats and fashionable trousers, but at least they were covered up head to toe and in multiple layers to boot. 

Like James, Mr. Hooper, Mr. Mogg, and Mr. Bushnan had also taken female roles tonight, but as two farm-women and a grand matron respectively they had laid on layers of shawls and old-fashioned petticoats, under which their sailors’ boots could be worn unseen. 

James, on the other hand, as the play’s sole ingenue, simply _had_ to be dressed a la mode, which meant a dress of fine cotton with a simple shift and shortened stays underneath. The skirt’s hemline was high enough to necessitate a pair of thin ladies’ slippers to complete the look, inside which James’s toes must have been iced clean through.

“Oh, good Christ, James!” Francis exclaimed. “If you’d run down and fetched your greatcoat between scenes, nobody would have blamed you for a moment!” 

“Couldn’t,” James forced out through his chattering teeth, and managed a smile. “Had t-to look lovely.” 

“You would look lovely in a burlap sack, my dear,” said Francis. “But look at you now—! Your lips are blue under that paint, how in God’s name did you manage to speak your last lines?” 

Bird came over now, an awkward shuffle which found him appearing between two black-coated seamen in his yellow costume jacket like a daisy blooming in the soil. 

“Was I really all that terrible?” he asked, in that earnest way of his, which normally Francis found endearing, but now only served as a distraction. 

“We can debrief at supper, Ned, if you’re staying,” Francis said, “but right now Miss Emily here requires some urgent attention, else bits of her start dropping off.” 

“Oh, good Lord!” Bird exclaimed, now fully seeing James’s state for himself. “And I thought I was chilled, in this wretched getup—you’ve come over all icicle! Why didn’t you say something, Jim?” 

“Why do you think?” Francis said. “This cove’s got more style than sense!” 

James tried to protest, but his shivering had become too severe now to even speak. For the first time on this expedition Francis was seeing the negative consequence of the boy’s indomitable spirit. The same unquenchable thirst for accomplishment that found him favored in the eyes of both captains had now led him right into the waiting arms of frostbite!

“Come now,” said Francis, “let’s get you someplace warm, immediately.” James nodded stiffly and, thankfully, allowed Francis lead him away.

With one hand placed where it had been before the curtain call at James’s lower back, and the other steady on his shoulder, Francis guided James through the bustling crowd on the quarterdeck-turned-auditorium and towards the fore hatch. 

He descended down the companionway first, and waited nervously below. James’s fingers were almost too stiff to grip the ladder, and in fact as he reached the bottom he did nearly topple backwards, his frozen hands slipping from the stiles, but Francis caught him safely before he could fall to the deck. 

It was warmer on the lower deck but only very slightly; with the bodies that normally crowded the galley all up on deck at the theatre, the chill permeated far deeper, like a solid thing, something alive and malicious that was at this very moment digging its claws into James. 

Francis hurried James into the midshipmen’s berth, where he was upset to find the small warming stove at the bulkhead had gone quite cold during the run of the show. 

Thinking quickly, he took the blanket from his bunk and spread it on the ground; then he took the one from James’s bunk, and the one from Henderson’s too for good measure, and wrapped them both around James as he sat him down before the stove. 

Francis stoked the coals hurriedly and then sat back—he could do no more. He watched as James warmed but slowly, too slowly; sitting unnaturally still with his eyes glazed over, telltale signs of a dangerously chilled state. 

The stove was taking far too long to heat. Francis couldn’t just sit here and watch James shiver; it wasn’t the thing to do at all. Perhaps it was the hours he’d spent acting the dashing gentleman just now—but he didn’t think it was, not really. This, he would have done for James under any circumstance requiring. 

Francis stripped the knit gloves from his hands, and began to rub James’s hands firmly and intently with his own. 

“Now, y-you don’t have to—” tried James, with what would have been his usual strident, commanding voice, had it not been burdened by the croaking weakness brought on by the cold. 

“If Captain Parry finds out I let the golden boy of the _Fury_ lose a finger due to his own vanity,” Francis interrupted, “then I suppose I will not be invited back on his next expedition, and not only would you lose your dexterity but also the pleasure of my company.” 

The logic, though roundabout and comical, seemed to satisfy James, who murmured his acquiescence and allowed Francis to continue massaging his hands, then to undo the buttons at his cuffs and work his way up James’s icy arms as well. 

He didn’t allow himself to think of this gesture in anything other than terms of practicality. If James were to be injured, or fall ill, Heaven forfend, then not only would Francis be bereft of his friend and messmate but the expedition would lose its very own prodigy. 

For of the old hands, those who’d gone out in ‘19, James Ross was by far and away Parry’s favorite, and everyone aboard the _Fury_ and the _Hecla_ knew it. James was always the Captain’s first choice to take with him to scout the bays and inlets they’d passed on their way, traveling for days on end to probe the coastline. He'd shown Francis the sketches he’d done at Point Cheyne, which were wonderful—was it not enough for him to be an expert at magnetism, and the best whist player in the wardroom? Must he be a dab hand with a pencil, as well? 

Francis could have listened to stories of past seasons on the ice for hours, but James had the unfortunate trait of affable modesty, which displayed itself in earnestly wanting to give Francis equal time for his own tales. However many times Francis insisted that his workaday journeys in the Pacific and ‘round the Cape of Good Hope were trifling in comparison to Ross’s winters with his uncle and Parry, Ross would likewise insist that Francis was just as much an explorer as he, and beg to be told of the Marquesas again, of Pitcairn, of St. Helena. 

After some minutes Francis was finding now that the places where skin was meeting skin were gaining their warmth back the fastest—James’s hands and forearms, and his feet and calves too, for Francis had pulled off James’s dainty slippers and his stockings in order to conduct the same approach on his lower extremities as well.

But James’s chest, the core of him, was yet cold as ice; Francis could feel the shivers wracking him still, as deep and terrifying as the shifts of the floes that encircled the ships, rumbling like great beasts in the night. 

There was nothing else to it, Francis supposed. Without further ado he began to strip off his own clothing, the costume Lyon had made up for him from Parry’s extensive collection tossed carelessly onto the bunk beside him, until his bare skin was prickling in the still-frigid air of the berth. 

“W-what are you—” James began, but Francis shushed him. “I’ll not hear any argument out of you. It’s either me or the sick list, and don’t think Dr. Edwards would hesitate to have you disbarred from the stage till the ice melts.” 

This shut James up; Francis unbuttoned the back of James’s dress and had him out of it as quick as he could, though it was quite a trial with James’s joints impossibly stiff from the cold. 

The skin of James’s back and chest was icy, suffering the same waxy pallor as his hands and feet, and Francis suffered a shiver of his own as he drew close. He laid James down on the blanket that covered the decks, all the better to fully apply the warmth of his own legs as well as his arms and chest, and tucked the top two layers around them, in order to seal the heat in. 

To keep James’s spirits up as he warmed, Francis began to talk; mostly of the play, including that marvelous moment when Hoppner and Fisher, as Lieutenant Worthington and Corporal Foss respectively, gave a rhythmic accounting of their military victories for England, resulting in the whole of the audience rising to their feet and giving a spontaneous huzzah that had stunned the cast into temporary silence. 

Then his topic moved to James himself, and his performance, which Francis naturally rated as highly as he could. 

“Did you know, last s-season,” James said, the first he’d spoken in some time, “I put up an advertisement, in the shipboard p-paper. Sabine kept putting me up in g-girls’ roles. And I’d no idea how t-to act.” 

“Did you, now?” asked Francis. The idea of James begging advice from anyone, and in such a public forum, seemed not to mesh with what he knew of the fellow, who seemed to be composed entirely of certainty. 

“A lieutenant t-took pity,” said James, a fragile chuckle emerging. “He took me aside and gave me some lessons in d-deportment, if you will.” 

James fell silent then, as if he were expecting a particular response to that, but Francis did not know the cue. 

“You know,” he said, at length, “I didn’t want to like you.” 

“What?” exclaimed James, mock-scandalized. “You mustn’t lie! Not with me in s-such a fragile condition.” 

“I didn’t,” Francis insisted. “The minute I stepped aboard, and you came at me like a carronade, all—vim and avidity—I set my mind to be stubborn about it. I was determined to be at odds with you this entire journey.” 

“Whyever for?” James did not sound offended, merely curious.

Francis sighed at the thought of having to explain the obvious, but he was the one who’d brought it up. “Well, for one, you are young,” he began. 

“So are you!” cried James. “You’re t-twenty-five, Frank, your birthday was mere months ago, I could hardly forget the night we had!” 

“Yes, and next to you, I feel a shriveled old maid! I was born in the century before you, after all.” 

“That is a fair point,” James conceded. “I shall call you old man, then, for the rest of our natural lives, and never let you forget it. But what other reasons? You must have them.” 

“Your experience,” said Francis. “I was envious of it. Your looks, and your high spirits, too. And… it was my instinct, I admit. You’ll find I have an amazing capacity for contrariness, whatever the occasion. Seeing how well-loved you were by all from the Captain to the cook drove me immediately to stake my claim on the opposite shore.”

“But you _did_ like me,” said James, a bit pleadingly. He fought back a shiver; tucked himself closer to Francis. “Despite yourself.” 

“I did,” said Francis, “I do. Naturally. It would be impossible not to.” 

“Are you saying I’m irresistible?”

Francis could not see James’s face but he knew by his tone he had an eyebrow cocked in expectation. 

So Francis grumbled an assent, at which James hummed in satisfaction and shifted again in Francis's arms— and that was when Francis realized he’d made a horrible mistake. 

To his dearest mortification he found he was growing hard; his prick was rising rapidly, seeking out the nearby press of James’s arse, which was not the cold edifice it had been of late, thanks to Francis’s warming stratagem.

He should have let go of James some minutes ago. He should have realized how mixed up he was, what with that damned script still rattling about in his head, confessions of love for a beautiful girl in a beautiful dress undergoing an alchemical reaction with the increasing heat of the male body beside him.

Ought he to acknowledge it? Or ignore it, in the unlikely hope that James had not noticed? 

Perhaps he should draw away entirely—James was not entirely beyond the grip of danger yet, but surely the stove had warmed the room sufficiently now to allow James to reach equilibrium on his own from here. 

There was no way James couldn’t feel it: Francis was now fully erect, his prick forcing itself into the scarce space between them. 

“I’m—please, forgive me,” he mumbled, beginning to remove himself. “It is only an animal reaction—” 

What could he expect then but an understanding mumble, followed by a mutual disentanglement done in awkward silence? 

Certainly not what James did next, which was to reach behind him and arrest Francis’s movement away with a hand on Francis’s leg, and then to press himself back against Francis’s stiffened yard, grinding onto it with enthusiasm.

Francis tried to hold his tongue and failed, letting out a sputter of a cry at the rush of acute pleasure that flooded him. 

“Come now," said James. "Who could blame you? You admitted my irresistibility yourself, not half a moment ago.” 

“I— I don’t—” stammered Francis. James’s excitement often bewildered him, confused him, excited him in turn, but this was something else entirely. 

“Besides,” James went on, “You have lost some of your warmth to me, and I must return it. Heat is not abundant in this land, I learned as much these last few seasons on the ice. Best to find it where you can, eh, if not make some of your own?” 

When Francis did not object—for how could he, to an offer made in such good humor, and by a friend so dear to him— James turned underneath their nest of blankets to face Francis, and Francis could not help but let out a laugh at the sight of James’s face, stage makeup cracked and smeared, the strong lines of his brow and nose rising above the cartoonish portrait of Miss Emily that his skin still half-held.

This laugh soon turned to an indelicate moan as James fumbled underneath the blankets and found Francis’s prick. His hand was warmed thanks to Francis’s attentions, which Francis now gave thanks to his self of minutes ago for attending to firstly, as the feel of it was unconscionably good around him.

“You are handsome too, you know.” This sounded ridiculous coming out of James’s mouth—James Ross, of the burnished sweeps of glossy hair, of the polished accent and the unblemished cheeks, the gentlemanly lineage and great promised future. 

“Oh, keep your pity,” mumbled Francis. “I am not.” It was enough to have James’s hand—far more than enough—he did not require his charity as well. 

“That don’t follow, Frank,” said James with utter confidence. “Your gallantry shines out your very eyes. And what a smile! There isn’t one like it on either ship!” 

This, Francis didn’t have words for. A common enough occurrence, when James was involved, for the younger man so easily resisted description. When he had lines to say, it was all much simpler: the effusive Mr. Bramble certainly didn’t have an unwieldy, indolent tongue in his mouth, halting the words at the juncture between thought and speech. 

Here and now, though, there was no plot to follow now, no arc of melodrama. Just Francis’s foot hooked around the back of James’s leg, tugging him closer; the healthy thatch of hair on James’s chest brushed his own skin, which he’d given up on ever being anything but near-boyishly bare. 

Instead of speaking Francis moved, without grace but with great willingness, an ungainly sort of horizontal shuffle to match James’s rhythm as he frigged him, practical strokes that stoked the heat at the center of him, set his toes curling and his fingers clutching. Shortly, James let go, and Francis huffed out a groan; the loss was only momentary, however, for he then felt the immediate press of James’s own prick, rubbing right up against Francis’s. 

James seemed, in classical James style, to know precisely what he was doing; this Francis was grateful for always, but especially so now, for if it had come down to him he would not been able to tell which direction was up. 

James spat into his hand and brought it underneath again, curving it now around their twinned lengths, and angled himself so he could bring his weight to bear on the endeavor. 

The effect was immediate; Francis plunged his face into the crook of James’s neck so that he would not make a fool of himself. He did not trust his mouth at the best of times, and certainly not at a moment like this. 

He had his hands hooked around James’s upper arms and was rubbing them unconsciously, digging deep circles with his thumbs into the skin there, which he could not see but knew was clear and unfreckled, so unlike his own ruddy, dappled surface. 

James gave a press of his palm to the base of Francis’s prick that nearly had him spending without warning. “Christ, James—!” Francis choked out, and James’s answering smile was a wicked thing. 

He wondered, a bit belatedly, if this was a frequent happening for James. Few in Francis’s own career had suffered him such pleasures. Despite James’s insistence, Francis knew he was not much to look at; he had been an ungainly boy, and was an even more awkward young man: a mid who still had yet to grow into his face, and was somehow taller than he ought to be, as if there was simply not enough _him_ to fill up the generous form he’d been allotted. 

But such inattention mattered little to him: indeed he felt his position was so precarious in His Majesty’s Navy as it was—being of middling birth, and profoundly Irish besides—that it was hardly worth the threat of being disrated just for a few moments of friction, stolen in a damp hold between watches with someone he hardly liked.

Was it worth it, even now? Would this momentary pleasure change the way James saw him, deal damage to the rapport that had grown since they left port in April?

For after all, he’d never had a friend like James before in his life—and the thought of a rupture coming between them because of a sordid, unecessary indiscretion was a deeply unhappy one.

James must have been able to sense Francis’s doubt darkening like a bruise—or see it on Francis’s too-elastic face, which was always giving him away—for he now brought a hand to Francis’s nape and gave it a friendly caress, scratching at the fine hair there. 

“We are getting warm, Frank,” he said, and the sound of his voice was a balm. “Come now. That’s all.” 

Thus reassured, Francis relaxed into James’s touch; eager and expert, it was James all over, a microcosm of his facility at everything he put his mind to. Francis’s own slickness mingled with James’s under James’s fingers, smoothing the way towards the edge he felt was fast approaching now. 

His hand clutched uselessly at James’s shoulder as he reached his crisis; in the midst of it he felt James join him too, and they spent together, James’s blackened lashes fluttering and a surprisingly soft sound escaping his lips. 

Francis was quite overheated, he realized, as he lay panting into James’s skin. With some effort he peeled himself half-away, and chanced to look James in the eyes. 

“I know not how to thank you, sir,” James said in a breathy voice, a sly smile playing ‘round his rouged mouth. 

Thanks to the haze that had settled in Francis’s head, it took him perhaps longer than he ought have to realize James was reciting one of his lines from the play. He cleared his throat, and called up his middling attempt at Frederick Bramble’s Kent accent as his response required: “I’m glad of it, ma’am; I never like to be thanked for merely doing my duty.” 

Laughing, they pushed themselves up off their sides, letting the blankets fall away, and Francis slumped back against his bunk, a hand resting carelessly in the sticky mess at his stomach. 

“It is all well and good to not have ruined our Captain’s precious costumes, but what about poor John’s blanket?” James was laughing now, turning the unfortunate fabric over in his hands. “Mind you, it’s not impossible we could make him believe it was his own emissions—you sleep like a rock but I’ve been awoken by his moanings more nights than not…” 

Francis was hardly listening. He had his head tipped back and was gazing up at the deckhead, his eyes sliding unfocused. 

“Do you not attend, old man?” said James, and Francis lurched back to the present. He knew James had been entirely and finally returned to the proper temperature, for his voice now held all the cocksure ease the shivers had sapped from it when Francis had first brought him belowdecks. 

“You really are going to go on calling me that?” Francis said, a note of disbelieving amusement creeping into his voice. 

“Of course I am.” James moved to sit next to Francis, and leaned his head on his shoulder as he stretched out, as much as the cramped quarters would allow, letting the stove, now finally at full-blast, rake its happy heat over his bared skin. “But do tell me, where were you?” 

“I was merely wondering if you will be so damnably foolish as to chill yourself half to death again the next time Lyon has you don a frock, and require rescue once more,” Francis explained. 

“Oh, no, certainly not,” said James, and for a moment Francis felt a paranoid fear grip him: James would act to prevent such as had happened tonight from happening again, for in some way Francis had proved inadequate, and he was about to be told how and why. 

But naturally, James he made no such claim. Instead, he grinned and went on, “For after that, I feel as if I shall never be cold again!” 

Though Francis knew such a thing was impossible—that the rest of the Arctic winter and then perhaps yet another stood between him, James, and the warmth of an English summer; and how beyond that, years hence, he wished to spend as many seasons here with James as the ice and the Admiralty would tolerate—he found himself quite agreeing. 

“Yes,” he said to James, “we shall never be cold again.”

***

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from a line of Frederick Bramble’s in the (rather mediocre) play _The Poor Gentleman,_ regarding Miss Emily Worthington: _“Give me those dear, bewitching features, where sweet expression always speaks, and sometimes sparkles.”_
> 
> The performance in question took place on December 17, 1821, [according to Lyon’s expedition memoir.](https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Private_Journal_of_Captain_G_F_Lyon/1xsFAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA96&printsec=frontcover) From his account I took the details about the temperature on stage that night, as well as the standing ovation during Worthington & Foss’s patriotic scene. 
> 
> However no cast list was recorded, so mine is a complete invention. What I’m saying is that it is absolutely not impossible that Ross and Crozier did indeed play lovers in that performance, and/or others that season :)
> 
> The text of the play is [accessible in full here.](https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Poor_Gentleman/OxgxAQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1)
> 
> Lyon [references an actor named “Young” in his memoir,](https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Private_Journal_of_Captain_G_F_Lyon/1xsFAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA106&printsec=frontcover) who I would assume to be [Charles Mayne Young,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Mayne_Young) a leading tragedian of the 1810s in London. Young was married to Julia Grimani, who acted as the Juliet to his Romeo. I doubt they were actually a “known” stage couple of the era but whatever, close enough for me, thanks Wikipedia. 
> 
> Other atmospheric details about the expedition came from Parry’s account, which can be read [here](http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/13512/pg13512-images.html) (ctrl+F "Mr. Ross" for the greatest hits, but the whole thing is very interesting). I also made use of May Fluhmann’s Crozier biography [Second In Command.](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VHViZypDwfD3JuSr5bOEr5atVL5EdQwU/view)
> 
> Ross’s advertisement is a real thing, and can be found [here.](https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.31822043018175&view=1up&seq=68) I’m making a bit of a leap in attributing it to him, as William Hooper, the purser, played six female roles that season to Ross’s four, but from the biographical hints I’ve sourced it seems that Hooper was older than Ross—so one might assume that Ross was slightly more likely to refer to himself as “an amateur” than Hooper. 
> 
> Ross’s dress probably looked [something like this.](https://i.imgur.com/NlOxfiV.jpg)
> 
> And lastly, [look at him. Look at this sweetheart.](https://i.imgur.com/uO0UmH2.png) No wonder James went all devious seducer on him! Who could resist!!!!!


End file.
